At Risk: 75 Years of Progress

The 2012 elections are about the future. There are alternate versions of that future that could well be determined by one national election and 468 House and Senate races. 

People really need to think about what the vision so-called fiscal conservatives have for the nation. They do not see a role for Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, or universal access to health care. They envision a nation where people can do business with whom they choose, have different pricing structures for different types of customers and refuse to serve areas for any reason they choose, even without explaining it.

Some of them speak openly of limiting or even eliminating the rights of victims to turn to the courts for justice and relief when they've been injured through negligence or circumstance. Some would even shift control of federal money, raised through taxes we all pay into the hands of people in the states, and try to limit the ability of federal judges to intervene under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Already, we are hearing candidates label such jurists as "bad judges" because some of their rulings consider Equal Protection central to U.S. laws. They would reduce or eliminate Pell Grants , in favor of loan programs that would turn our children into indentured servants for decades to come. They would privatize Social Security, and look coldly at those whose future security was lost in a system rife with marketplace flaws.

In the age of Super PACs, with unlimited corporate money flowing in to support candidates who would place business ahead of fairness, we have to do more than just focus on the presidency. The prevent defense that's stifled work on Capitol Hill in recent years could be on the beginning. We could see a new "Contract With America" that winds up being a contract on the working man.

Thirty years ago, President Reagan led the charge to turn community block grants over to the states. Now some of those cities that used to receive them contain residential dead zones. They are entire neighborhoods, of abandoned houses, broken glass and decaying streets that rival the brownfields of long-dormant industrial sites we've been dealing with for decades.

Between 1980 and 1997, 27 percent of the nation's public hospitals closed, eliminating 66,000 beds. As Baby Boomers age, Medicare, becomes our problem. Free market healthcare could well jeopardize any retirement we are able to salvage from the Great Recession, and frankly, most of us do not have time to build a financial cushion to protect us from that risk.

Rest, assured, there are many problems, and of course there are limits to what the taxpayers and the nation can afford, but when it comes to programs I know my parents and grandparents depended on and found comfort in, I am just not willing to risk everything on a crapshoot with the profit mongers and speculators.

Who occupies the White House and who does the work on Capitol Hill could well determine if more of that is part of America's vision of the future. Everything from FDR's New Deal to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society is hanging in the balance.


They may say "beating Obama is the most important thing," but believe me, they've got bigger plans than that, and if their vision of "returning to American values" does not include you, then finding that out in 2013 could be a truly costly mistake.